Extended Author's Notes for "Investigating My Dad For My Aunt"

[8letters]

Note: These are extended Author’s Notes for a story that hasn’t been posted yet. I’ll provide a link to the story once it is posted. Until then, I suggest you don’t read this as it contains lots of spoilers.

FAQ for my extended author notes:
* These are the equivalent of the author notes in the last few pages after a novel is finished
* I’m posting them now because I want to have a link in my story to the extended author notes. The only links you can have in a LitE story is to something on the LitE site
* Someone suggested I post the extended author notes after the story is published and then post the link to it as a comment. There are two problems with that: (1) a lot of readers don’t read comments and I want them to see the link to the extended author notes and (2) my stories typically get a lot of comments quickly so by the time I get the comment to the extended author’s notes created, it’d be several down in the list of comments
* I’m posting them in the Story Feedback forum because (1) there isn’t really a place for them in the forums and (2) I am hoping readers well leave comments about the story after they’ve read the extended author notes

The story behind the story
There’s been a “Hammered – an Ode to Mickey Spillane - the 2022 Story Event Official Support Thread” thread in the AH since 3/5/22. I’ve never written a story for an event. The two times I entered a story into a contest, it was because the story I was working on just happened to fit an event that was coming up. Friday 7/8, I was procrastinating on reading feedback from my beta-readers for “My Sister, A Modern Day Rupenzel”. I decided to read the “Hammered” thread. I then found the page for the 2021 event and read two stories from there. Now, I’ve not read a Mickey Spillane novel. I have read a number of classic private detective novels like “The Thin Man” and “The Maltese Falcon”. The stories I read from the 2021 event gave me no feel of a classic private detective novel.

Over the weekend, I came up with an idea for a private detective story. I spent most of the weekend playing with it in my head. Monday, I sat down and then banged out a 16K word story over the next three and a half days. I spent the next day and a half editing it. No beta-readers. Not much feedback from my friend TM.

Thoughts on the story
For other reasons, I had read up on what divorce in the US was like before No-fault Divorce laws were enacted in the seventies. As I started thinking about the story idea over the weekend, I realized how private investigators played an important role in society - facilitating the end of unhappy marriages - that at the same time would lead to them being shunned. I tried to capture that in the story.

My impression is that in 1949, two women wouldn’t consider having sex together. Male homosexuality was very bad; female homosexuality was unimaginable. In my mind, Millie and Perdy wouldn’t contemplate having sex just between the two of them. It was the presence of a man that made them having sex acceptable to them. When Jack stopped being able to perform that function, they started looking around for a replacement and settled on Gus.

I have several stories where the main male character has sex with two different women in the story. I’ve gotten lots of comments saying that the story would have been better if there was FF action in the story. Hopefully this story has enough FF action for those kind of commenters

I’m open to doing a sequel for this story. Millie deserves some grandkids! The sequel would involve Gus going undercover to spend a lot of time with a dangerous gang. I can’t think of any reason why he’d do that. If you’ve got a plot idea, send it to me in a PM.

 

[bumblegrum]

Note: These are extended Author’s Notes for a story that hasn’t been posted yet. I’ll provide a link to the story once it is posted. Until then, I suggest you don’t read this as it contains lots of spoilers.

FAQ for my extended author notes:
* These are the equivalent of the author notes in the last few pages after a novel is finished
* I’m posting them now because I want to have a link in my story to the extended author notes. The only links you can have in a LitE story is to something on the LitE site
* Someone suggested I post the extended author notes after the story is published and then post the link to it as a comment. There are two problems with that: (1) a lot of readers don’t read comments and I want them to see the link to the extended author notes and (2) my stories typically get a lot of comments quickly so by the time I get the comment to the extended author’s notes created, it’d be several down in the list of comments
* I’m posting them in the Story Feedback forum because (1) there isn’t really a place for them in the forums and (2) I am hoping readers well leave comments about the story after they’ve read the extended author notes

The story behind the story
There’s been a “Hammered – an Ode to Mickey Spillane - the 2022 Story Event Official Support Thread” thread in the AH since 3/5/22. I’ve never written a story for an event. The two times I entered a story into a contest, it was because the story I was working on just happened to fit an event that was coming up. Friday 7/8, I was procrastinating on reading feedback from my beta-readers for “My Sister, A Modern Day Rupenzel”. I decided to read the “Hammered” thread. I then found the page for the 2021 event and read two stories from there. Now, I’ve not read a Mickey Spillane novel. I have read a number of classic private detective novels like “The Thin Man” and “The Maltese Falcon”. The stories I read from the 2021 event gave me no feel of a classic private detective novel.

Over the weekend, I came up with an idea for a private detective story. I spent most of the weekend playing with it in my head. Monday, I sat down and then banged out a 16K word story over the next three and a half days. I spent the next day and a half editing it. No beta-readers. Not much feedback from my friend TM.
Thoughts on the story
For other reasons, I had read up on what divorce in the US was like before No-fault Divorce laws were enacted in the seventies. As I started thinking about the story idea over the weekend, I realized how private investigators played an important role in society - facilitating the end of unhappy marriages - that at the same time would lead to them being shunned. I tried to capture that in the story.

My impression is that in 1949, two women wouldn’t consider having sex together. Male homosexuality was very bad; female homosexuality was unimaginable. In my mind, Millie and Perdy wouldn’t contemplate having sex just between the two of them. It was the presence of a man that made them having sex acceptable to them. When Jack stopped being able to perform that function, they started looking around for a replacement and settled on Gus.

I have several stories where the main male character has sex with two different women in the story. I’ve gotten lots of comments saying that the story would have been better if there was FF action in the story. Hopefully this story has enough FF action for those kind of commenters

I’m open to doing a sequel for this story. Millie deserves some grandkids! The sequel would involve Gus going undercover to spend a lot of time with a dangerous gang. I .and an interesting note. I was acculturated (lovely word) in England, and I heard, whether correct or not, that the situation there re female homosexuality was similar, but for somewhat different reasons. The story goes that when a bill outlawing homosexuality generally was presented to Queen Victoria for royal assent, she struck out all references to female activities on the grounds that, "ladies do not do that sort of thing!". But it happened, of course, but not illegally. Just socially unacceptable.

IMHO, your story was very well written in a US context, although I doubt whether it would ever rival Mickey Spillane or Dashiel Hammet. Certainly worth reading and well worth all of five stars, more if they were available. I am a fan of mother/son sex, and have even written a couple myself. I must read more of your stories.